Saturday, April 25, 2009

The sea has it's ups and downs

Sorry about the clich'e title of this post. I just heard the sound of hundreds of rolling eyes.

I broke my own world record by sailing to Albany taking four days and 18 hours! I was doing 420 nautical miles nearly doubling my previous record of 227 nautical miles when I sailed from Perth to Geraldton late last year.

The trip was going quite well until Spirit hit by a squall off Cape Leeuwin for about six hours. I used a lot of my energy getting the boat back under control and drew on previous experience when he was caught in a similar situation last year and hove to for about five hours while I rested.

The following evening at about two in the morning there were some technical problems with the autohelm and it switched itself off. I had to go on deck to get control of the boat and try to work out what went wrong. This took about two hours during which time Spirit was hit by a King wave which came straight down into the cockpit filling it up and of course soaking me, I'd compare it to someone pouring a family size swimming pool straight down on top of me. A big thank you to Murray/Karenne Deere and the Princess Royal Yacht Club for their warm welcome and hospitality.

There are some pictures of Jamie's arrival in Albany and a short documentary of the trip in the gallery section.

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